~x..s1ave Stories	Page Two ~	Go
	(Texa2)	.





	‘II d1dn~t have no quart ers but stays ‚ round the place and. throw old sack down and. lay there and sleep. Pm ‘fraid to run, ‘cause master say he‘d hunt me and kill nigger.

	“When ~ ~ seventeen I marries a gal while maater~. on drunk spell. Master he run her off, and I slips off at night to see her, but he finds lt oi~t. He takes a big, long knife and cute her head plwnb off, and t les a great ‚ heavy weight to her and makes me throw her in the river. Then he puts me in chains ~nd every night he come give me a whippin‘ ‚ for long time.

	“When war come, master swear he not gwlne fight, but the Yankees they captu~res New Orleans and. throws master in a pen and. guards him. He get s a chance and ‘scapes.

	“When war mn over he wcn‘ t free me, says It~ valuable to him in his trade, He say, ‘Nigger, you‘s suppose to be free bu.t I‘ll pay ~rou a dollar a week and iffen you ru~ns off I 111 kIll you. ~ So he makes me do 1 ike beTh‘ the war, but give me ‘bout a dollar a month, ‘stead week.

	“He say I cost more‘n I~m worth, bu~t he won‘t let me go. Times I don‘t know why I didn‘t die beTh‘ It~ growed, sleepin‘ on the ground, winter and summer, rain and snow. Bit not xm~tch snow there.

	“Master helt me long years after the war. If anybody git after him, he told them I stay ‘cause I wants to stay, but told me if I left he‘d kill hIm ‘nother nigger, I stayed till he gits in a drunk brawl one night with men and women and they gits to shootin‘ and some kilt. Master ~ot kilt. Then I‘m left to live or die, so I wanders from place to place. 1 nearly starved to death beTh‘ I ~d leave New Orleans ‚ ‚ cause I couldn ‚ t think master wn dead and Itm ‘fraid. Finally I gits up nerve to leave town, and stays the first night